Thursday, February 15, 2007

Done with this 12 episode anime, it turned out to be better than I expected, having read a rather disappointing review though the author did say most people would probably disagree with him. Which is true. The animation is great, the soundtracks fitting, spell battles superb and the plot decent. Loveless is based on the manga of the same series.With the exception of a few kisses here and there, this series is definitely not yaoi, not even shonen-ai, probably a mix of Shoujo and fantasy. It involves the concept of Fighters and Sacrifices, couples who slug it out in spell battles that involve the use of words to manipulate various forms of magic.

For those of you familiar with Robert Jordan's epic and seemingly never ending Wheel of Time Series, the whole Fighter/sacrifice stuff is similar to the Sean'chan Sul da'maane and da'maane pairing. The Fighter fights (duh) using magic and the Sacrifice absorbs any damage inflicted on the Fighter. It is a 'master-slave' relationship only that here, the sacrifice is the 'master' and the Fighter the 'slave'. The whole show's basically about Ritsuka, a 6th grader still traumatised by the death of his older brother 2 years back, having to cope with the sudden appearance of his brother's Fighter, the powerful but strange Soubi. Ritsuka tries to comprehend Soubi who both angers as well as attracts him, throw in his quest to find those who murdered his brother in the shadowy Seven Moons organization, couples(Fighter/Sacrifice) who are constantly sent to snatch Ritsuka away from Soubi and you have a plot.

Of course, this anime isn't perfect. I'm not thrilled with the concept of cats' ears and tails which i think is really weird and the ending is not very complete: one still has no idea who ordered Ritsuka's brother's murder at the organisation or if Ritsuka/Loveless will ever bond with Soubi as Fighter and Sacrifice. Which in a way is understandable I guess, the anime was based on the Manga which was up to Volume 4 at that time, so things weren't really complete. The current Japanese version is Volume 7 and the wickedly efficient Obsession Groupis currently scanlating Ch 3 of volume 7.

With the fantastic spell battle scenes, an interesting cast of Fighter/Sacrifice couples: the High School Couple, the Gothic couple, the Sadistic young punks and Lesbian Lolitas, each with very different forms of attacks, the anime does not fail to entertain. Without further ado, here's some snippets of the fight scenes between Soubi/Ritsuka and my favourite couple pairing of their adversaries encountered in the anime, the High School kids. While arguably not the strongest couple ( sadistic punks), their elemental attacks and the ensuing fight scenes are by far the most visually spectacular. Links to the anime and manga may be found below.